John Elkann

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John Elkann is the executive chairman of Ferrari, the CEO of Exor and the chairman of Stellantis. Born in New York on 1 April 1976, he is the Agnelli heir who sits at the top of Ferrari’s Formula 1 hierarchy today. Fred Vasseur runs the Scuderia. Elkann runs the people who hired Vasseur.

The inheritance

Elkann’s position did not come from a motorsport background. It came from an Italian dynasty that decided he would run it.

His maternal grandfather was Gianni Agnelli, the long-time head of Fiat and the figure most associated with the family that controls the company that owns Ferrari. Gianni’s original intended heir had been his nephew Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, who died of cancer in 1997 at thirty-three. Gianni’s only son, Edoardo, was estranged from the family and died in 2000. Faced with a collapsed succession line, Gianni turned to the next generation and chose John, the eldest son of his daughter Margherita.

Elkann was brought onto the Fiat board in December 1997, at the age of twenty-one. He moved between the United Kingdom, Brazil, France and Italy during his education, took a scientific baccalauréat at the Lycée Victor Duruy in Paris, and graduated in engineering from the Politecnico di Torino. He began his working career in 2001 at General Electric, with posts in Asia, Europe and North America, before formally joining the family business in 2003.

The reshuffle that gave him real authority came after the deaths of Gianni Agnelli in 2003 and his great-uncle Umberto Agnelli in 2004. Elkann became vice-chairman of Fiat, and spent the rest of the decade working under Sergio Marchionne and Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. In 2009 he merged the two family holding companies into Exor, the investment vehicle through which the Agnelli descendants still control Ferrari. In 2010, at thirty-four, he replaced Montezemolo as chairman of Fiat.

From that point on, he was the one leader at a time that the Agnelli succession had always been built around.

Chairman of Ferrari since 2018

Elkann took the Ferrari chairmanship in July 2018, in circumstances no one had planned for. Sergio Marchionne, who had been running both FCA and Ferrari, fell suddenly and seriously ill. Elkann was chosen to replace him at Ferrari just days before Marchionne’s death.

It was not a ceremonial appointment. Ferrari is a publicly listed company in which Exor is the largest shareholder, holding roughly a quarter of the shares, and Elkann is its executive chairman rather than a figurehead. Between late 2020 and early 2021 he also served briefly as Ferrari’s chief executive, in the interim period after Louis Camilleri’s surprise resignation and before Benedetto Vigna took the job.

What that adds up to, in Formula 1 terms, is simple. Vasseur reports upwards. Elkann is where that line ends.

The Hamilton move

The clearest recent evidence of how Elkann uses that authority was the Lewis Hamilton signing. When Ferrari announced on 1 February 2024 that the seven-time world champion would join the team for 2025, it was one of the biggest driver moves in modern Formula 1. Reports from Italian media placed Elkann at the centre of the negotiations, meeting Hamilton away from the paddock and pushing hard to close the deal.

That kind of direct involvement in a single driver signing is unusual for a chairman of a listed company. It reflects how Ferrari actually works. On the commercial and identity side, the Scuderia is an asset that matters far more than its share of the group’s revenue would suggest, and it is treated as one. Hamilton joining Ferrari was not simply a sporting decision. It was the kind of decision Elkann tends to personally own.

The style

For long stretches Elkann keeps a low public profile. Unlike most F1 principals, he is not a weekly fixture in the paddock, and he does not explain himself through television interviews after every race. When he does speak, the effect tends to be pointed.

In the middle of a difficult 2025 campaign, in which Ferrari failed to win a race despite the Hamilton arrival, Elkann publicly told Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to focus on driving and to talk less. It was a rare direct shot at his own drivers from a Ferrari chairman, and it gave the outside world a clear reading of how the top of the company felt about the season.

At the same time, he has consistently backed Fred Vasseur when speculation linked Christian Horner to the team after Horner’s departure from Red Bull. Ferrari issued an unequivocal statement of confidence in Vasseur rather than letting the rumour drift. That too fits Elkann’s pattern. He intervenes rarely, but when he does, he intervenes sharply and decisively.

What this adds up to is a chairman who does not try to run the team day to day, but who sets the temperature. Who gets hired, who gets fired, which drivers are pursued, whether the team principal still has authority in a bad season. Those are his calls.

One piece of a larger portfolio

Ferrari is not the only thing Elkann runs. He is chairman of Stellantis, the 15-brand automotive group created by the 2021 merger of FCA and Peugeot, and he is the chief executive of Exor, the family’s diversified investment company with stakes in Ferrari, Stellantis, Philips, CNH and The Economist among others. After the abrupt departure of Carlos Tavares as Stellantis CEO in December 2024, Elkann even took a temporary executive role there while a successor was found.

For Formula 1 readers, the point is not the full corporate map. It is that Ferrari’s executive chairman is also carrying a global automotive portfolio and a family empire. That shapes how Ferrari is run. Decisions about the Scuderia are made by someone whose attention is divided by design, and whose judgement of success and failure is filtered through a much wider business view than the one most team principals live inside.

The flip side of that is also true. When the endurance programme won the manufacturers’ and drivers’ titles in the World Endurance Championship and took a third consecutive victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the 499P in 2025, Elkann used those results publicly as the example of what Ferrari can deliver when everything is aligned. That was not only a celebration. It was a signal to the Formula 1 side of the operation.

The family dimension

Elkann’s authority still sits inside a family that does not always agree on who should have it. Since 2023 he has been involved in a long-running inheritance dispute with his mother, Margherita Agnelli, over the estate of her parents. In April 2026, a Swiss court declared inadmissible a request by the Elkann siblings to have the Swiss judiciary assert control over the matter, leaving the legal battle unresolved.

None of that has changed his operational position at Ferrari, Exor or Stellantis, which rests on control structures that were set up years earlier. But it is part of the context in which he operates. The Agnelli succession that brought him to the top of Ferrari has never stopped being contested behind the scenes.

Why he matters in Formula 1

Elkann matters in Formula 1 because the chain of command at Ferrari runs through him.

The Scuderia has more team principals in its recent past than most teams, because Ferrari sacks team principals in a way most teams do not. That willingness to change leadership comes from the top. So does the appetite to pursue a Lewis Hamilton signing that other teams would not have reached for. So does the public demand that drivers talk less in a hard season. So does the continued backing of Vasseur into a 2026 campaign that was always going to be loaded with expectation.

For fans trying to understand why Ferrari moves the way it does, Elkann is usually the answer behind the answer. He is not the one on the pit wall. He is the one above everyone who is.

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